


Carol for a Principality

by malicegeres



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Canon - Book, Christmas, Established Relationship, Funny, IDK What Else You Want It's A Gomens Christmas Carol, Inspired by A Christmas Carol, M/M, They're Gonna Haunt Off-Brand Jeff Bezos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27941540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malicegeres/pseuds/malicegeres
Summary: Christmas is a busy time of year for angels, and Aziraphale isn't feeling much in the way of holiday cheer. Luckily, Crowley has a plan to brighten his season. It involves some ghosts, a tech billionaire, and the sort of devilish scare tactics only a human could dream up.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 23





	Carol for a Principality

**Author's Note:**

> All I'm gonna say is the only thing surprising about this fic is I didn't write it sooner.

Scott Gigs was dead: to begin with. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.

His death was common knowledge to the public, of course. Gigs wasn’t just a man, or even an inventor;1 he was a _brand_. His storefronts had become makeshift memorial sites, his face adorned magazine covers for weeks, and for a time everyone wondered whether the Orange brand would be able to go on without its glorious figurehead. They managed, of course, because the marketing team that had made Scott Gigs into Scott Gigs was happy to let the product carry on his legacy. And so, rather than being remembered for his miserable company towns in China or the wastefulness of planned obsolescence, Scott Gigs would be remembered as an innovator.

Jake Bezoar wouldn’t be remembered that way when he died. Orinoco was a glorified big box store with lower prices and quicker online delivery. It was practical, but it wasn’t sexy enough to make people overlook the things he had to do to run a business even when it made him the richest man in the world. Orange made sexy computers and sexy phones. Bill Gates didn’t have a sexy product, and he used to be the face of everything evil in tech, but then he’d done a little philanthropy and now everyone loved him. Bezoar had tried it, but whenever he donated to local homeless charities, it was “Tax Orinoco” this and “gentrification” that and, “Give your workers bathroom breaks or we’ll stick your head in a guillotine.”

No, Jake Bezoar would never get eternal glory. He’d thought this year he might be able to settle for trip to the Caribbean with his supermodel girlfriend while he was still alive, but she’d dumped him just before Thanksgiving. Now he was just a middle-aged divorcé alone in his mansion for the holidays. How Elon Musk had managed to hang onto Grimes long enough to make a baby, he didn’t know.

Elon Musk. That charismatic son of a bitch. Jake Bezoar was trying to get to space, too, but there weren’t any pop stars throwing themselves at him. You’d think having all the money in the world would be enough to make people at least pretend to like you, but he had no one. Sometimes he wondered whether it might be better to give it all away, move back to that three-bedroom house in Bellevue, and start over. But, then, if he didn’t have money nobody would remember him. Maybe he wasn’t loved, but just last year he’d had cities all over America groveling at his feet for a chance to become Orinoco HQ2. Philanthropy didn’t get you that.

As he padded over to the fridge for another beer, he glanced over at the Christmas tree in the corner of his living room and scowled.

“Bah humbug,” he muttered to nobody at all.

* * *

It was three days until Christmas, and London was all aglow. Every high street was swarming with shoppers, buskers, and revelers coming to drink it all in. If you looked down from above, Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road looked like mighty rivers of bundled up human beings surging into rapids around the bigger shops. Branches of people trickled like creeks into the surrounding neighborhoods, looking for a place to rest or find something more special than you’d find on the beaten path.

Between the normal duties an angel had at Christmastime and the nonstop string of people invading his shop to look for gifts, it was a miracle he’d found time for a meal with with Crowley.2  
Aziraphale hated Christmas—the whole Christmas season. It had taken him years to admit it to himself, but he did. Certainly he liked Christmas in _theory_. Christmas in theory was a time of joy and sharing, a shining light in the darkest time of year and all that nonsense people liked to insist was true. In practice, it was a nightmare. It was hard enough coming up with ways to get human beings to be good to each other the rest of the year. At Christmastime Heaven expected him to make them do more good, and under far more stressful circumstances. Every year he ran himself ragged trying to meet the demands his higher ups made of him.

“You and every shop worker in the Western world,” said Crowley, giving the gin-and-elderflower concoction in his glass a lazy swirl.

“I know,” he said miserably. “Half my miracles go to them to make up for everyone else grinding their Christmas spirit to dust.” He glared. “Which is probably why you’re in such good spirits right now.”

“Well of course I am! Rampant materialism, frenzied shopping, travel, and it all culminates in families who barely talk to each other for the rest of the year being cooped up under one roof. What’s a demon not to love? Honestly, angel, I think you’re being a little hard on yourself.”

“Perhaps,” he sighed. “I just can’t help feeling that I’m missing something.”

They paid the bill, and Crowley offered to walk Aziraphale back to his.

“Do you remember back in Judea when this time of year was just about pretty lights and gambling?” Aziraphale asked. “Obviously Jewish people still partake, but it was so much more pleasant when that was all I was obligated to contend with around the solstice.”

“There are still pretty lights for Christmas,” said Crowley. He dipped his hand into the pocket of a young man’s expensive-looking coat and fished out a scratchcard adorned with images of bells, ribbons, snowflakes, and candy canes. “And gambling.”

He waved a hand over the card and, less gracefully than before, he bent down to tuck it into the tattered blankets of a woman sleeping against a covered bus stop.

Aziraphale gave him a long, knowing look.

Crowley averted his gaze, sticking his hands sheepishly in his pockets. “She’s just going to spend it on drink,” he grumbled.

He hooked his arm around Crowley’s, pulling him closer to his side. “And now she’ll have money for food and a warm place to sleep and wash up.” His face twisted suddenly into a scowl. “Goodness, even _you_ have more Christmas spirit than I do.”

“Stop kicking me while I’m down, angel,” he groaned. 

Then he took a breath, excavated his hands from his pockets, and pulled Aziraphale to the side of the pavement. “Look, if I _did_ like this time of year for all the holly jolly reasons you’re accusing me of—and I’m not saying I do—it’d be because somehow, despite all the conspicuous consumption and the stress and the bickering, a lot of humans find it in themselves to go out of their way and be kinder to each other. It’s not much, but I don’t know.” He took Aziraphale’s hand in his. “It’s a little inspiring when you take notice of it.” He paused. “ _I imagine_.”

“It’s good that Christmas inspires some people to be kind, but it’s hard to hear above all this.“ He gestured at a gap between two buildings that opened onto an eye-straining mass of coats and hats on Oxford Street.

Crowley nodded sympathetically and pulled him along, wrapping his arm back around Aziraphale’s as he went. “If they didn’t trot the story out in pageants every year, you’d never guess this was all to celebrate a teenaged refugee giving birth in a barn. Far be it from me to give your side credit, but it wasn’t all bad at the start. I quite liked the Gnostics.”

“Yes, my dear, you would.”

“I’m just saying, you went wrong when you let Constantine convert. You can’t have the Emperor convert to a religion that started to oppose the Empire and let him stay the Emperor.” He let out a self-satisfied chuckle. “All the kingdoms of the world indeed.”

“It was a quick way to spread the good word! How was I to know?”

“Yes, how were you to know? It wasn’t as though there was somebody around telling you it was a bad idea. And I certainly don’t recall you coming ‘round to that somebody’s house every other night trying to get him to tell you that you actually had a point and you were doing the right thing, because you definitely weren’t having doubts about the crap Heaven was pushing on you.”

Aziraphale wrenched his arm away. “Oh, so I’m the one who ruined Christmas!”

“Alright, my bad. That was a little harsh to bring that up.” He offered his arm again. Aziraphale took it grudgingly.

They walked the rest of the way to Aziraphale’s shop in silence. It was tense, at first, but by the time they reached the front door Aziraphale found he was sad to leave the calm that had come over him behind. If he’d known what was going through Crowley’s mind, thisi might not have been the case. 

Because as they walked tranquilly arm in arm, Crowley had an idea. An awful idea. Crowley had a wonderful, _awful_ idea.

“What are you doing Christmas Eve?” he asked him.

Aziraphale glowered at him.

“Specifically, I mean.”

“Oh, just the usual rounds of divine ecstasy before I spend the morning reminding children disappointed with their toys that it’s the thought that counts.”

“Well, cancel it.”

“What? Crowley, I—“

“Cancel it. I’m taking care of Christmas Eve this year.”

Aziraphale eyed him suspiciously. “How?”

He smiled like a snake. “You’ll see.”

“My dear boy, I’m under enough stress at it is. The last thing I need is for you to try and surprise me on Christmas Eve.

“Just trust me, angel. You’re going to love this.”

* * *

It was the conversation about Constantine that had got Crowley thinking. It wasn’t Aziraphale’s fault that Christmas had been ruined. Christmas had been a real joy for most people at various points in its existence. Before Cromwell it had been a chance for the have-nots to get drunk and bully the rich for pudding. Crowley couldn’t condone the reason for the season, but he couldn’t bring himself condemn the chaos it brought either. It had lost something after the Restoration, he felt. It wasn’t just that it was less fun, it was that more and more Christmas was about the things you could buy rather than the things you could do for (or to) people.

But there were things Crowley liked about Christmas even now, loathe as he was to admit it. Maybe no one went around mumming anymore, but there was something about the bright lights and the crush of warm human bodies at the darkest time of year that cheered him a little. And, on a personal level, all the bad things about Christmas acted as a sort of shield from any prying eyes checking in on him from Hell. If he was participating in the festivities, it was only because he was overseeing the continuing corruption of a holy season. And if, as he oversaw that corruption, he happened to help a mother who hadn’t had the funds to preorder a popular toy find one hidden on the back of a shelf or he guided a runaway cat home in time for the holiday, who was going to notice?

It was the rare time of year he understood what it was like to be tempted, albeit in the opposite direction. Under everything that was ugly and grating about the holiday, there was an underlying pulse of kindness he found it difficult to resist walking in step with. Sure, a lot of the talk about peace on earth and goodwill toward men rang hollow, but the way Crowley saw it that was only because there were enough people taking the idea to heart that the people who didn’t stuck out like sore thumbs by contrast. But that didn’t do Aziraphale much good. It was easy for a demon whose work year ‘round looked like the worst of Christmas to find some good in the season, and it was also just a lot easier to implement evil on a macro level than it was to mass produce goodness. Constantine had proven that.

Then it hit him. Mass production. Millions on millions of people working grueling hours away from their loved ones for laughable pay to benefit the people resting on their laurels at the top. Those people never felt that pulse of kindness Crowley did. They probably had people they paid to do their Christmas shopping for them while the millions who’d made their fortunes worked overtime right up until Christmas Eve—and they’d make them work Christmas Day, too, if they could get away with it. Many of them did, and they walked away with enough money to end world hunger three times over.

You couldn’t get everyone in the world to agree to treat each other kindly, but someone like that, someone who had real power over people’s lives? That would be a win for Aziraphale. A _proper_ win. The trouble was that you couldn’t just pull a few strings and get people like that to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. You had to scare them into thinking they’d lose everything they had if they didn’t make a change. Labor strikes were a tool Crowley kept close at hand in his belt, but there wasn’t infrastructure in place for what he was thinking. He needed to scare someone really rich and really famous so much that he’d actually do substantial, lasting good, and he’d need to do it before Christmas Day.

It took him an embarrassingly long time to remember Charles Dickens, but as soon as he got there the rest of the plan fell into place. All he needed were some ghosts.

He arrived at the shop just as Aziraphale was closing up for the night.3 From the way Aziraphale sighed as he saw Crowley come in, it was clear he’d spent much of the day shooing away last minute Christmas shoppers.

“Nearly done,” he said, scribbling something into his ledgers with a sour expression.

Crowley leaned against a shelf and checked his watch. “That’s alright. We’ve got time zones working in our favor.”

Aziraphale’s head snapped up, and he gave Crowley a weary look. “Time zones?”

“We’re going to America!”

“America?” he repeated wretchedly.

He grinned. “Ever been to Seattle?”

“I’ve made it a point not to.”

“Well, that’s alright! Technically we’re going to Medina.”

“Dare I ask why?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said cheerfully. “It’d ruin the surprise.”

* * *

What locals called the Big Dark had well and truly settled over Western Washington for Christmas. The sun rose late and set early, and even when one was lucky enough to get outside while it was still technically up, it seldom pierced through the slate grey ceiling that hung low over tall trees and tall buildings.

Jake Bezoar made a point of getting out for his daily run before the sun set, because the dim was at least more energizing than the dark of night. What he didn’t know was that, as he trudged up his gravel path to the muddy hiking trail he liked to use, two winged figures sat in the gloom awaiting his return. It was going to be a very dark Christmas indeed.

* * *

1 And, in truth, he hadn’t so much invented anything as found a way to repackage other people’s inventions (usually developed with public funding) into something shiny and marketable.

2 Aziraphale always invoked the Arrangement at this time of year, and Crowley had thrown in a free negative cancer biopsy so he could collect on one of the many lunches he was owed before the season ended.

3 Crowley had given up keeping track of Aziraphale’s hours several centuries ago, as he found that educated guesses based on the angel’s mood the last time he’d seen him was a far more accurate predictor than whatever the sign on the front window said.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Follow me at [crowleyraejepsen](https://crowleyraejepsen.tumblr.com) on Tumblr!


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